The above image was created by 'shoppingthree identical images of a caronto a photograph of a street. The context of the photo (a receding street) creates in your mind theillusion that the cars are of different sizes - but they are exactly the same.Via Tai WIki Widbee

Funny, but in actual fact it should be the other way around. As president, he has, or should have, far greater influence than the Russians. Too bad our guy had not a lick of experience playing in the big leagues before the genius electorate put him in the Oval Office. And we have three and a half years of this to go.

"There's another budget crisis in Washington, and it's unfolding inside the Democratic party. The Democratic National Committee remains so deeply in the hole from spending in the last election that it is struggling to pay its own vendors.

It is a highly unusual state of affairs for a national party -- especially one that can deploy the President as its fundraiser-in-chief -- and it speaks to the quiet but serious organizational problems the party has yet to address since the last election."

But hey, let's give them more power over every aspect of our lives, shall we?

"If this article is to be believed, the government, through the EPA, will require that all new woodstoves be EPA approved. Old woodstoves will have to be scrapped (the law will not allow old woodstoves to be sold). And the enforcement of this new measure will most likely be effected through home insurance companies. The writer of the article states that "The EPA is just another tool of subjugation." That pretty much sums it up."It is my understanding that the nation's air is cleaner than it's been in years, so the need for this is not clear. Unless, that is, the government has an innate hostility to anything that allows people to fend for themselves independent of the government itself.On this issue, and many others, we see again the propensity of government to make normal things illegal, and to tell us again and again what we can and can't do with our own lives, even down to how to heat our own homes.The wisdom of the founders in making government as small and weak as possible appears every day to have been the right way to go. Whether we can return to that better way without disaster remains to be seen.Hat tip: Gorge's Grouse

Physicists have discovered a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality.

“This is completely new and very much simpler than anything that has been done before,” said Andrew Hodges, a mathematical physicist at Oxford University who has been following the work.

The revelation that particle interactions, the most basic events in nature, may be consequences of geometry significantly advances a decades-long effort to reformulate quantum field theory, the body of laws describing elementary particles and their interactions. Interactions that were previously calculated with mathematical formulas thousands of terms long can now be described by computing the volume of the corresponding jewel-like “amplituhedron,” which yields an equivalent one-term expression.

“The degree of efficiency is mind-boggling,” said Jacob Bourjaily, a theoretical physicist at Harvard University and one of the researchers who developed the new idea. “You can easily do, on paper, computations that were infeasible even with a computer before.”

Beyond making calculations easier or possibly leading the way to quantum gravity, the discovery of the amplituhedron could cause an even more profound shift, Arkani-Hamed said. That is, giving up space and time as fundamental constituents of nature and figuring out how the Big Bang and cosmological evolution of the universe arose out of pure geometry.

“In a sense, we would see that change arises from the structure of the object,” he said. “But it’s not from the object changing. The object is basically timeless.”

While more work is needed, many theoretical physicists are paying close attention to the new ideas.

The work is “very unexpected from several points of view,” said Witten, a theoretical physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study. “The field is still developing very fast, and it is difficult to guess what will happen or what the lessons will turn out to be.”

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Since the 16 year old was bent that she missed the trip we took to the Sierras two weeks ago, we made some time this Saturday to get back up there before the winter closes the country down.

Back to Monitor Pass, then off on dirt roads until we came to a spot where we could stop and shoot safely for a bit.

A little photography time didn't hurt either.

Interestingly, although it is deer season, and there were multiple pickups parked where the pavement ended, we saw and heard no one the whole time. I don't know where the hunters went, but it wasn't where we were.

Part of the fun is to burn some powder, shoot cans and pinecones, and generally have a good time.

Here the youngest strikes a pose. Nobody better break into her apartment!

Where the sky meets the earth.

Our route ran along the edge of where the land fell away steeply to the east, toward the Slinkard and Antelope Valleys. It went quite suddenly from rolling meadows and rocky hills to steep mountainsides plunging down to the east. It seemed the sky scraped along the top of the ridge, the clouds combed by the stiff pine trees.

At the edge of the falloff, you could see Slinkard, and then the Antelope Valley down below. Soon there will be a pile of snow here, and no one will be back until the spring, but today it was an airy and awesome place to spend an hour or two.

The Aspens were significantly more colorful than two weeks ago, but there were still large swaths that were predominately green.

All in all, a good time. The kids got to get out with their dad, we saw some new country, and had a great time taking pictures and pushing some ammo out the tubes. I hope we get the chance to score another trip or two this fall.

I'm all for Texas - heck it's home to part of the Canadian River - but I don't think the Ted Cruz incident is about a last stand. Nor do I think it is circumscribed or defined by the Obamacare fustercluck.

What we have here is the opening salvo against the ruling political classes. I think that Ted Cruz is using Obamacare as the reason for lobbing the first verbal grenades over the stockade wall into the massed political classes inside the fort - many of whom inhabit the Republican Party.

I think this is the long overdue start of a necessary upheaval in the American political establishment. What course it will take and how it will play out is impossible to know.

That uncertainty of outcome is exactly what is needed - the living, risky real world meets the tired, moribund old world of deals, cronies, fixes, dynasties, power cartels and endless manipulations to ensure no surprises.

The English longbow was the very first voter's veto because it allowed a peasant to knock the Lord of the Manor off his horse and because it could be done from far enough away to give the peasant a chance to escape by running like hell for the nearest woods.

The feudal system is no more in Western countries. We use words now instead of the longbow. Words will be sufficient to upset the modern ruling classes. I think it is time to open the windows so that fresh air blows in. Time to put the best dinnerware safely away in the cupboard, send the kids over to Grandma's house and let the war of words begin.

Maybe Americans are embarking on a most interesting Cruz.Hot words lead to longbows, especially when our elite rulers feel their power slipping away. I'm stringing my bow right now.

Talk turned to trash at the Hennepin County Government Center this week when surprised employees discovered their standard-size garbage cans replaced by tiny new ones.

“I wasn’t sure whether it was a toy or a marketing tool,” said Mark Thompson, Hennepin County District Court administrator, of the diminutive cans, which appeared in offices and courtrooms Monday morning.

The recycled-plastic, quart-size containers are neither. Designed to encourage less trash-making and more recycling, they limit what employees can toss before they have to dump the collection into a bigger can down the hall. On the side of each can is written, “This is all the GARBAGE I make!”

Not only do the miniature trash cans save the planet, but they also decrease the burden on our soon to be nationalized healthcare system by forcing the bureaucrats to get more exercise.

Employees are told to empty the cans at a centrally located receptacle on their floor. “This short walk will help the county save money, stay healthy and protect the environment,” said an informational flier given to workers.

"A scorching assessment of the president as foreign-policy actor came from a former senior U.S. diplomat, a low-key and sophisticated man who spent the week at many U.N.-related functions. “World leaders are very negative about Obama,” he said. They are “disappointed, feeling he’s not really in charge. . . . The Western Europeans don’t pay that much attention to him anymore.”

The diplomat was one of more than a dozen U.S. foreign-policy hands who met this week with the new president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani. What did he think of the American president? “He didn’t mention Obama, not once,” said the former envoy, who added: “We have to accept the fact that the president is rather insignificant at the moment, and rely on our diplomats.” John Kerry, he said, is doing a good job.

Had he ever seen an American president treated as if he were so insignificant? “I really never have. It’s unusual.” What does he make of the president’s strategy: “He doesn’t know what to do so he stays out of it [and] hopes for the best.” The diplomat added: “Slim hope.”

Twelve years ago, Donna Gregory was helping her then-husband go through his deceased grandparents’ home in Arnold, Missouri, when she came across a box in their bedroom closet labelled “War Department.” Inside she found a collection of documents, clippings and medals belonging to Army private first class John Farrell Eddington, including his Bronze Star, Purple Heart, draft card, dog tags, high school diploma and a letter from the War Department notifying the family that Private Eddington was killed in action in Italy on June 27, 1944. He was 25 years old.

In the box along with 16 letters he had written to his wife, Helen, there was one particularly moving letter Eddington had written to his infant daughter Peggy three weeks after she was born on February 5th, 1944. He was still training in Texas when he wrote the letter, but before he even got a chance to meet his beloved baby girl, John was deployed overseas. He died four months later, never having held little Peggy in his arms.

Touched and fascinated by the history and emotion inside the box, especially in the letter to baby Peggy, Donna Gregory took it home to St. Louis and researched the soldier off and on for the next dozen years

She enlisted the help of friends and random Facebook people who read about the story and the crowdsourced effort worked. She found Peggy’s grandson, then she found her son, and then she found Peggy, now Peggy Eddington-Smith of Dayton, Nevada. Donna called Peggy and told her she had her father’s mementos and most poignantly, the letter he wrote her before he died.

Peggy was shocked. She knew almost nothing about her father other than that he had died in World War II. Her mother had been so devastated by John’s death that she couldn’t bear to speak of him. Helen never remarried because, as she put it the few times she spoke of him, she had once found the perfect man and would never again find the perfect man.

On Saturday, September 21st, Donna Gregory arrived at the Dayton Intermediate School gym. In a ceremony attended by Peggy Eddington-Smith, her family, members of Veterans of Foreign Wars who had fought in World War II, local dignitaries and residents, Peggy received her father’s Purple Heart, Bronze Star, personal documents, replicas of his dog tags, gold star flags and the letters. Donna read the very special letter John Eddington wrote to Peggy aloud before giving it to her.Read the rest for the amazing finale. What a story!